Hello All,
I bought a house with a 1977 (or so is cast on the inside of the firebox) Vermont Castings Vigilant stove.
Can someone teach me how to use it?
I've been in the house maybe 8 years, and have probably only burned in the stove about 2 dozen times. It's obviously not our primary source of heat, but I burn on those days when it's just unbearably cold and windy outside.
The limited number of burns also has to do with how much work I have to put into it when I do have a fire. I'm constantly having to attend to the fire for one reason or another. I'd love to just throw logs in and let them burn, but I'm having to babysit the stove.
I have a small lever on the back that opens up the trap door - I guess what you would call the thermostat. It closes very quickly after I start the fire, and essentially snuffs out the burn. My normal operation is to prop it open, but sometimes I even have to open the front door to keep oxygen on the fire. I'm always having to turn and re-arrange logs because it only seems the left side of the fire box wants to burn wood.
When I do get the fire going hot - it's ungodly hot. My house is an 1800 sq.ft. split level with the stove downstairs. When the fire is going enough to be self-sustaining, the upstairs of my house is 85 degrees or warmer.
Also, when it's going hot, it eats wood. Like, I'm putting wood in it every 20 minutes.
Last, a buddy told me that I could shut the flue when the fire's going really hot, and it would help conserve wood and burn more efficiently. But, when I loaded the sucker up on a snow day and shut the flue, then went out to play with the kids in the snow, I came back in to a very smokey home. It smelled like a campfire in my house for a week.
Can someone tell me how to burn efficiently in this thing? Or at least have a fire that doesn't have to be burning at a temperature where my family is sweating bullets?
Thanks!
I bought a house with a 1977 (or so is cast on the inside of the firebox) Vermont Castings Vigilant stove.
Can someone teach me how to use it?
I've been in the house maybe 8 years, and have probably only burned in the stove about 2 dozen times. It's obviously not our primary source of heat, but I burn on those days when it's just unbearably cold and windy outside.
The limited number of burns also has to do with how much work I have to put into it when I do have a fire. I'm constantly having to attend to the fire for one reason or another. I'd love to just throw logs in and let them burn, but I'm having to babysit the stove.
I have a small lever on the back that opens up the trap door - I guess what you would call the thermostat. It closes very quickly after I start the fire, and essentially snuffs out the burn. My normal operation is to prop it open, but sometimes I even have to open the front door to keep oxygen on the fire. I'm always having to turn and re-arrange logs because it only seems the left side of the fire box wants to burn wood.
When I do get the fire going hot - it's ungodly hot. My house is an 1800 sq.ft. split level with the stove downstairs. When the fire is going enough to be self-sustaining, the upstairs of my house is 85 degrees or warmer.
Also, when it's going hot, it eats wood. Like, I'm putting wood in it every 20 minutes.
Last, a buddy told me that I could shut the flue when the fire's going really hot, and it would help conserve wood and burn more efficiently. But, when I loaded the sucker up on a snow day and shut the flue, then went out to play with the kids in the snow, I came back in to a very smokey home. It smelled like a campfire in my house for a week.
Can someone tell me how to burn efficiently in this thing? Or at least have a fire that doesn't have to be burning at a temperature where my family is sweating bullets?
Thanks!
